Will the real Gareth Bale please stand up? Carlo Ancelotti, coach of Real Madrid, says he trusts the moment is at hand for the world’s most expensive footballer to start justifying that suffocating price tag on Saturday night in the most searing of all spotlights at Barcelona’s Nou Camp.

The Bale questions continue to swirl around Madrid incessantly and urgently. Is he properly fit yet? Is he really worth the money? Is he overpriced, overrated and over here? Or trying too hard? If he was not quite so brilliant, wealthy and privileged, it might even be possible to feel a pang of sympathy for the Welshman because a debut El Clásico is the most unforgiving possible date to feel you have to demonstrate your worth.

You can almost feel the anxiety and the impatience of the Madridistas; they want Bale to produce the goods – and they expect it now – but at the same time, talking to the Bernabéu faithful, there is a genuine sense of goodwill towards the likeable young galáctico who, they appreciate, has had the misfortune to start his career in Spain while fighting both injury and hugely unflattering comparisons with the scorching form of Cristiano Ronaldo.

A total of 174 minutes is no amount of time to judge him so, for the moment, he still gets the benefit of the doubt, especially with the growing feeling both here at Madrid’s Valdebebas training ground, before the team flew off to Barcelona on Friday night, and within Bale’s camp that their champion is now fit and raring to go.

With such optimism, though, comes only added pressure on a bloke who has at times looked to be labouring with an almost over-zealous keenness to impress because he must feel he has to remind everyone what the fuss is all about. Ancelotti, for one, thinks his moment for altered fortunes is nigh.

“It is true that he hasn’t had an easy time but he’s worked hard and we’ve used the international break to improve his condition. And now in my opinion – and his opinion – he is ready to play from the beginning and when he begins to play it will be the real Bale,” said Ancelotti.

“Since Bale has been here he has had no pain in his back,” added the Italian, dismissing alarming tales about disc protrusions which appeared in the Spanish press. “His problem was physical conditioning. He hadn’t trained but now he is fine.”

Indeed, it seems that Bale has been so keen to recover top shape after his thigh trouble that even his Spanish lessons have supposedly had to take a back seat while he has been undertaking extra training sessions.

The other night after a decidedly underwhelming cameo against Juventus, though, Bale hardly inspired a world of confidence when he shrugged how he was “not sure” if he was fit to play from the start of the Clásico but he looked in sprightly nick on a miserable, wet afternoon at Valdebebas when he was not chatting to his old Tottenham pal Luka Modric.

All of which does not necessarily mean Bale will make only his second start, since his bright hour, featuring his only goal, in the season opener at Villarreal.

Though it was inevitably the first, most pressing question Ancelotti faced here, he neatly deflected the interrogation by joking: “The training session will be very important in my decision. It is all the head of PR’s fault! If the training had been before [the conference] I could have told you if he’d start.”

It looks a 50-50 shot. Such has been the disenchantment about Karim Benzema’s form, there has been talk of Ronaldo, Bale and Angel di María providing a swift, three-pronged attack to exploit Barça’s perceived vulnerability behind cavalier full-backs.

Ancelotti likes the idea of Bale powering down the right where Di María has been so impressive this season, having scored three and made three in his past four matches.

Indeed Di María is so important to Ancelotti that he revealed that he was happy to let Mesut Özil depart for Arsenal. “It was a technical decision. I preferred to have Di María. He has less quality than Özil, but for his character and help he gives the team, I wanted him.

“With the arrival of Bale, I thought it more important to have Di María than Özil, looking at the team’s overall balance.”

Still, Ancelotti could let Bale take the right flank while employing the Argentine on the other side. “If you ask Bale, he says he prefers to play from the right,” said Ancelotti. “I think he likes to start there so he can come inside to shoot on his left foot.”

What a night it would be to reprise one of his Lane specials. Everyone, even the unlikely paternalistic figure of Ronaldo, has been doing their bit to rush to Bale’s defence, as if this sensitive soul actually needs it.

Barça’s old ringmaster, Johan Cruyff, basically told Bale’s critics to get off his back with his observation: “Buying a player for that huge sum means the lad will have problems because he will never be judged normally. It is going to be very tough for him and it’s not fair.” But what did fairness ever have to do with it? If Madrid lose, falling six points behind Barça with the ominous feeling that another fruitless campaign of catch up could be on the cards, what price an underperforming Bale starting to become a scapegoat?

Yet this is being too negative. This starry night, the one Bale must have dreamed most about on signing, he must see as an opportunity, not some great burden.

If he could grasp this chance to be judged favourably alongside five more of the world’s very best players – his own team-mate Ronaldo and Barcelona’s divine quartet of Leo Messi, Xavi, Andrés Iniesta and new boy Neymar (who still has his own impressing to do) – then it would be the proper announcement that Bale has arrived and truly belongs.